"Let go of him," she told the dog, but her voice was now meek and sad and strengthless. The dog barely twitched its ears at the sound of it and didn't pause at all. It merely went on pulling the thing with the disarrayed widow's peak and the blotchy complexion. This thing no longer looked like Disco Gerald--not a bit. Now it was only Dead Gerald, sliding across the bedroom floor with a dog's teeth buried in its flabby biceps.
A frayed flap of skin hung over the dog's snout. Jessie tried to tell herself it looked like wallpaper, but wallpaper did not--at least as far as she knew--come with moles and a vaccination scar. Now she could see Gerald's pink, fleshy belly, marked only by the small-caliber bullet-hole that was his navel. His penis flopped and dangled in its nest of black pubic hair. His buttocks whispered along the hardwood boards with ghastly, frictionless ease.
Abruptly the suffocating atmosphere of her terror was pierced by a shaft of anger so bright it was like a stroke of heat-lightning inside her head. She did more than accept this new emotion; she welcomed it. Rage might not help her get out of this nightmarish situation, but she sensed that it would serve as an antidote to her growing sense of shocked unreality.
"You bastard," she said in a low, trembling voice. "You cowardly, slinking bastard. "
Although she couldn't reach anything on Gerald's side of the bed-shelf, Jessie found that, by rotating her left wrist inside the handcuff so that her hand was pointing back over her shoulder, she could walk her fingers over a short stretch of the shelf on her own side. She couldn't turn her head enough to see the things she was touching--they were just beyond that hazy spot people call the corner of their eye--but it didn't really matter. She had a pretty good idea of what was up there. She pattered her fingers back and forth, running their tips lightly over tubes of make-up, pushing a few farther back on the shelf and knocking others off it. Some of these latter landed on the coverlet; others bounced off the bed or her left thigh and landed on the floor. None of them were even close to the sort of thing she was looking for. Her fingers closed on a jar of Nivea face cream, and for a moment she allowed herself to think it might do the trick, but it was only a sample-sized jar, too small and light to hurt the dog even if it had been made of glass instead of plastic. She dropped it back onto the shelf and resumed her blind search.
At their farthest stretch, her exploring fingers encountered the rounded edge of a glass object that was by far the biggest thing she had touched. For a moment she couldn't place it, and then it came to her. The stein hanging on the wall was only one souvenir of Gerald's Alpha Grab A Hoe days; she was touching another one. It was an ashtray, and the only reason she hadn't placed it immediately was because it belonged on Gerald's end of the shelf, next to his glass of icewater. Someone--possibly Mrs. Dahl, the cleaning lady, possibly Gerald himself--had moved it over to her side of the bed, maybe in the course of dusting the shelf, or maybe to make room for something else. The reason didn't matter, anyway. It was there, and right now that was enough.
Jessie closed her fingers over its rounded edge, feeling two notches in it--cigarette parking-spaces. She gripped the ashtray, drew her hand back as far as she could, then brought it forward again. Her luck was in and she snapped her wrist down at the instant the handcuff chain snubbed tight, like a big-league pitcher breaking off a curve. All of this was an act of pure impulse, the missile sought for, found, and thrown before she had time to ensure the failure of the shot by reflecting on how unlikely it was that a woman who had gotten a D in the archery mode of her two-year college phys ed requirement could possibly hit a dog with an ashtray, especially when the dog was fifteen feet away and the hand she was throwing with happened to be handcuffed to a bedpost.
Nevertheless, she did hit it. The ashtray flipped over once in its flight, briefly revealing the Alpha Gamma Rho motto. She couldn't read it from where she lay and didn't have to; the Latin words for service, growth, and courage were inscribed around a torch. The ashtray started to flip again but crashed into the dog's straining, bony shoulders before it could roll all the way over.
The stray gave a yip of surprise and pain, and Jessie felt a moment of violent, primitive triumph. Her mouth pulled wide in an expression that felt like a grin and looked like a screech. She howled deliriously, arching her back and straightening her legs as she did. She was once again unaware of the pain in her shoulders as cartilage stretched and joints which had long since forgotten the limberness of twenty-one were pressed almost to the point of dislocation. She would feel it all later--every move, jerk, and twist she had made--but for now she was transported with savage delight at the success of her shot, and felt that if she did not somehow express her. triumphant delirium she might explode. She drummed her feet on the coverlet and rocked her body from side to side, her sweaty hair flailing her cheeks and temples, the tendons in her throat standing out like fat wires.
"HAH!" she cried. "I... GOT... YOUUUU! HAH!"
The dog jerked backward when the ashtray struck it, and jerked again when it bounced away and shattered on the floor. Its ears flattened at the change in the bitchmaster's voice. What it heard now was not fear but triumph. Soon it would get off the bed and begin to deal out kicks with its strange feet, which would not be soft but hard after all. The dog knew it would be hurt again as it had been hurt before if it stayed here; it must run.
It turned its head to make sure its path of retreat was still open, and the entrancing smell of fresh blood and meat struck it once more as it did so. The dog's stomach cramped, sour and imperative with hunger, and it whined uneasily. It was caught, perfectly balanced between two opposing directives, and it squirted out a fresh trickle of anxious urine. The smell of its own water--an odor that spoke of sickness and weakness instead of strength and conndence--added to its frustration and confusion, and it began to bark again.
Jessie winced back from that splintery, unpleasant sound--she would have covered her ears if she could --and the dog sensed another change in the room. Something in the bitchmaster's scent had changed. Her alpha-smell was fading while it was still new and fresh, and the dog began to sense that perhaps the blow it had taken across its shoulders did not mean that other blows were coming, after all. The first blow had been more startling than painful, anyway. The dog took a tentative step toward the trailing arm it had dropped ... toward the entrancingly thick reek of mingled blood and meat.
It watched the bitchmaster carefully as it moved. Its initial assessment of the bitchmaster as either harmless, helpless, or both might have been wrong. It would have to be very careful.
Jessie lay on the bed, now faintly aware of the throbbing in her own shoulders, more aware that her throat really hurt now, most aware of all that, ashtray or no ashtray, the dog was still here. In the first hot rush of her triumph it had seemed a foregone conclusion to her that it must flee, but it had somehow stood its ground. Worse, it was advancing again. Cautiously and warily, true, but advancing. She felt a swollen green sac of poison pulsing somewhere inside her--bitter stuff, hateful as hemlock. She was afraid that if that sac burst, she would choke on her own frustrated rage.
"Get out, shithead," she told the dog in a hoarse voice that had begun to crumble about the edges. "Get out or I'll kill you. I don't know how, but I promise to God I will. "
The dog stopped again, looking at her with a deeply uneasy eye.
"That's right, you better pay attention to me," Jessie said. "You just better, because I mean it. I mean every word." Then her voice rose to a shout again, although it bled off into whispers in places as her overstrained voice began to short out. "I'll kill you, I will, I swear I will, SO GET OUT!"
The dog which had once been little Catherine Sutlin's Prince looked from the bitchmaster to the meat; from the meat to the bitchmaster; from the bitchmaster to the meat once more. It came to the sort of decision Catherine's father would have called a compromise. It leaned forward, eyes rolling up to watch Jessie carefully at the same time, and seized the torn flap of tendon, fat, and gristle that had once been Gerald
Burlingame's right bicep. Growling, it yanked backward. Gerald's arm came up; his limp fingers seemed to point through the east window at the Mercedes in the driveway.
"Stop it!" Jessie shrieked. Her wounded voice now broke more frequently into that upper register where shrieks become gaspy falsetto whispers. "Haven't you done enough? Just leave him alone!"
The stray paid no heed. It shook its head rapidly from side to side, as it had often done when it and Cathy Sutlin played tug-o'-war with one of its rubber toys. This, however, was no game. Curds of foam flew from the stray's jaws as it worked, shaking the meat off the bone. Gerald's carefully manicured hand swooped wildly back and forth in the air. Now he looked like a band-conductor urging his musicians to pick up their tempo.
Jessie heard that thick throat-clearing sound again and suddenly realized she had to vomit.
No, Jessie! It was Ruth's voice, and it was full of alarm. No, you can't do that! The smell might bring it to you ... bring it on you!
Jessie's face knotted into a stressful grimace as she struggled to bring her gorge under control. The ripping sound came again and she caught just a glimpse of the dog--its forepaws were once again stiff and braced, and it seemed to stand at the end of a thick dark strip of elastic the color of a Ball jar gasket--before she closed her eyes. She tried to put her hands over her face, temporarily forgetting in her distress that she was cuffed. Her hands stopped still at least two feet apart from each other and the chains jingled. Jessie moaned. It was a sound that went beyond desperation and into despair. It sounded like giving up.
She heard that wet, snotty ripping sound once more. It ended with another big-happy-kiss smack. Jessie did not open her eyes.
The stray began to back toward the hall door, its eyes never leaving the bitchmaster on the bed. In its jaws was a large, glistening chunk of Gerald Burlingame. If the master on the bed meant to try and take it back, it would make its move now. The dog could not think--at least not as human beings understand that word--but its complex network of instincts provided a very effective alternative to thought, and it knew that what it had done--and what it was about to do--constituted a kind of damnation. But it had been hungry for a long time. It had been left in the woods by a man who had gone back home whistling the theme from Born Free, and now it was starving. If the bitchmaster tried to take away its meal now, it would fight.
It shot one final glance at her, saw she was making no move to get off her bed, and turned away. It carried the meat into the entry and settled down with it caught firmly between its paws. The wind gusted briefly, first breezing the door open and then banging it shut. The stray glanced briefly in that direction and ascertained in its doggy, not-quite-thinking way that it could push the door open with its muzzle and escape quickly if the need arose. With this last piece of business taken care of, it began to eat.
9
The urge to vomit passed slowly, but it did pass. Jessie lay on her back with her eyes pressed tightly shut, now beginning to really feel the painful throbbing in her shoulders. It came in slow, peristaltic waves, and she had a dismaying idea that this was only the beginning.
I want to go to sleep, she thought. It was the child's voice again. Now it sounded shocked and frightened. It had no interest in logic, no patience for cans and can'ts. I was almost asleep when the bad dog came, and that's what I want now--to go to sleep.
She sympathized wholeheartedly. The problem was, she didn't really feel sleepy anymore. She had just seen a dog tear a chunk out of her husband, and she didn't feel sleepy at all.
What she felt was thirsty.
Jessie opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was Gerald, lying on his own reflection in the highly polished bedroom floor like some grotesque human atoll. His eyes were still open, still staring furiously up at the ceiling, but his glasses now hung askew with one bow sticking into his ear instead of going over it. His head was cocked at such an extreme angle that his plump left cheek lay almost against his left shoulder. Between his right shoulder and right elbow there was nothing but a dark red smile with ragged white edges.
"Dear Jesus," Jessie muttered. She looked quickly away, out the west window. Golden light--it was almost sunset light now--dazzled her, and she shut her eyes again, watching the ebb and flow of red and black as her heart pushed membranes of blood through her closed lids. After a few moments of this, she noticed that the same darting patterns repeated themselves over and over again. It was almost like looking at protozoa under a microscope, protozoa on a slide which had been tinted with a red stain. She found this repeating pattern both interesting and soothing. She supposed you didn't have to be a genius to understand the appeal such simple repeating shapes held, given the circumstances. When all the normal patterns and routines of a person's life fell apart--and with such shocking suddenness--you had to find something you could hold onto, something that was both sane and predictable. If the organized swirl of blood in the thin sheaths of skin between your eyeballs and the last sunlight of an October day was all you could find, then you took it and said thank you very much. Because if you couldn't find something to hold onto, something that made at least some sort of sense, the alien elements of the new world order were apt to drive you quite mad.
Elements like the sounds now coming from the entry, for instance. The sounds that were a filthy, starving stray eating part of the man who had taken you to see your first Bergman film, the man who had taken you to the amusement park at Old Orchard Beach, coaxed you aboard that big Viking ship that swung back and forth in the air like a pendulum, then laughed until tears squirted out of his eyes when you said you wanted to go again. The man who had once made love to you in the bathtub until you were literally screaming with pleasure. The man who was now sliding down that dog's gullet in gobs and chunks.
Alien elements like that.
"Strange days, pretty mamma," she said. "Strange days indeed." Her speaking voice had become a dusty, painful croak. She supposed she would do well to just shut up and give it a rest, but when it was quiet in the bedroom she could hear the panic, still there, still creeping around on the big soft pads of its feet, looking for an opening, waiting for her to let down her guard. Besides, there was no real quiet. The chainsaw guy had packed it in for the day, but the loon still voiced its occasional cry and the wind was rising as night approached, banging the door more loudly--and more frequently--than ever.
Plus, of course, the sound of the dog dining on her husband. While Gerald had been waiting to collect and pay for their sub sandwiches in Amato's, Jessie had stepped next door to Michaud's Market. The fish at Michaud's was always good--almost fresh enough to flop, as her grandmother would have said. She had bought some lovely fillet of sole, thinking she would pan-broil it if they decided to stay overnight. Sole was good because Gerald, who would live on a diet of nothing but roast beef and fried chicken if left to his own devices (with the occasional order of deep-fried mushrooms thrown in for nutritional purposes), actually claimed to like sole. She had bought it without the slightest premonition that he would be eaten before he could eat.
"It's a jungle out there, baby," Jessie said in her dusty, croaky voice, and realized she was now doing more than just thinking in Ruth Neary's voice; she actually sounded like Ruth, who in their college days would have lived on a diet of nothing but Dewar's and Marlboros, if left to her own devices.
That tough no-bullshit voice spoke up then, as if Jessie had rubbed a magic lamp. Remember that Nick Lowe song you heard on IWBLM when you were coming home from your pottery class one day last winter? The one that made you laugh?
She did. She didn't want to, but she did. It had been a Nick Lowe tune she believed had been titled "She Used to Be a Winner (Now She's Just the Doggy's Dinner)," a cynically amusing pop meditation on loneliness set to an incongruously sunny beat. Amusing as hell last winter, yes, Ruth was right about that, but not so amusing now.
"Stop it, Ruth," she croaked. "If you're going to free-load in my head, at least have the decency to quit teasin
g me. "
Teasing you? Jesus, tootsie, I'm not teasing you ; I'm trying to wake you up! .
"I am awake!" she said querulously. On the lake the loon cried out again, as if to back her up on that. "Partly thanks to you!"
No, you're not. You haven't been awake_really awake_for a long time. When something bad happens, Jess, do you know what you do? You tell yourself, "Oh, this is nothing to worry about, this is just a bad dream. I get them every now and then, they're no big deal, and as soon as I roll over on my back again I'll be fine." And that's what you do, you poor sap. That's just what you do.
Jessie opened her mouth to reply--such canards should not go unanswered, dry mouth and sore throat or not--but Goodwife Burlingame had mounted the ramparts before Jessie herself could do more than begin to organize her thoughts.
How can you say such awful things? You're horrible! Go away!
Ruth's no-bullshit voice uttered its cynical bark of laughter again, and Jessie thought how disquieting--how horribly disquieting--it was to hear part of your mind laughing in the make-believe voice of an old acquaintance who was long gone to God knew where.
Go away? You'd like that, wouldn't you? Tootsie-Wootsie, Puddin' 'n Pie, Daddy's little girl. Any time the truth gets too close, any time you start to suspect the dream is maybe not just a dream, you run away.
That's ridiculous.
Is it? Then what happened to Nora Callighan?
For a moment that shocked Goody's voice--and her own, the one that usually spoke both aloud and in her mind as "I"--to silence, but in that silence a strange, familiar image formed: a circle of laughing, pointing people--mostly women--standing around a young girl with her head and hands in stocks. She was hard to see because it was very dark--it should still have been full daylight but was for some reason very dark, just the same--but the girl's face would have been hidden even if the day had been bright. Her hair hung over it like a penitent's shroud, although it was hard to believe she could have done anything too horrible; she was clearly no more than twelve or so. Whatever it was she was being punished for, it couldn't be for hurting her husband. This particular daughter of Eve was too young to have even begun her monthly courses, let alone have a husband.